Imaging the ultrasmall and capturing the superfast Structure determination and dynamics Studies with

• 作 者: Xuanxuan Li Haiguang Liu
• 机 构: ComplexSystemDivision,BeijingComputationalScienceResearchCenter,Beijing,China100094
• 出 处: The 9th Asian Biophysics Association Symposium (ABA2015)(第九届
• 发表日期: 2015年5期

X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs) provide new opportunities for structural biology.I will give an overview on XFEL applications in structural determinations, covering the following topics: (1) the special features of XFEL experiments, (2) the typical setups, and (3) basic data analysis flow.As examples, I will show a few successes in nanocrystallography [1,2] exploiting diffraction signals from very tiny crystals, then discuss the potentials and challenges in structure determination from single molecules.Both approaches utilize the ultra-short, super-intense X-ray pulses to realizediffract-before-destroymode and toimage ultrasmall.The nanocrystallography technique requires development of general phasing method.I will talk about a possible approach that utilizes the features of tiny crystals to do ab initio phasing.Coupling with pump-probe methods, the ultrashort X-ray pulses can be used to study protein conformation changes, i.e., capture the superfast [3].In summary, XFELs offer exciting opportunity to structural research, and have the potential of producing molecular movies at high spatial/temporal resolutions.